Peet's Economy Watch

As you've read here before, we have a really simple metric to gauge the economy -- it's our local Peet's Coffee Shop across the street from our office in downtown Los Altos. There are three questions we ask -- what kind of cars are parked in front at 8AM (execs getting caffeinated before starting their day), is there a line at 10AM (rendezvous for job related networking) and how many bicycles are parked outside in the late afternoon (job seekers taking a break). During the economic up ticks the answers are -- expensive Mercedes in the morning, no line at 10AM and no bikes in the afternoon. Our indicators are currently showing a pretty good mix of expensive cars in the morning but there's beginning to be an annoying line around 10AM and bikes have begun appearing in the late afternoon. So we're getting mixed signals.